‘I have no will to live’

groups met underneath a haze of tear gas.

Amy, a former EMT, carried a sign into the masses. Bob, a physician’s assistant for 30 years, tried to blend in to take photos of the protests. He watched the people in red T-shirts duck in and out of the crowd, pouring milk and water into people’s eyes and sending them back toward the chaos. He weaved through the crowd and found Jason.

“What are you guys doing here?” Bob asked.

“We’re street medics,” Jason replied.

“I’m a P.A.,” Bob said. “My wife was an EMT. We’d like to help you out.”

Later that afternoon, they met at a Mexican restaurant and laid out their overlapping ideals. Jason wanted a wider reach, a way to bring medicine to the people who needed it. Bob and Amy wanted a release for their newfound activism. Together, they set up booths at health fairs and in parks, checking blood pressure and testing for diabetes. Bob held after-hours appointments at an urgent-care center.

Amy had found an empty house downtown and was considering flipping it into a bed-andbreakfast. But as they drove back to their home in Gold Canyon that day, doubts crept in.

“I don’t think I want to do this,” she told Bob. “I want to do something that gives back to the community.”

“Why don’t you open a clinic?” Bob asked.

Amy wavered. A health clinic would come with a pile of paperwork and licensing. “I don’t want to deal with insurance,” Amy said. “I don’t want to have to do all that.”

“OK,” Bob said. “Why don’t we open a free clinic?”

The diabetes clouded her vision, so Maria barely noticed as Jason pulled into her driveway for a February house call. She sat at a table outside, eating lime-flavored noodles out of a paper cup. When Jason was close enough to recognize, she stood on unsteady legs and shuffled inside.

They had met years before, when Maria tried to heal an infected wound that had torn through her foot; she couldn’t afford the antibiotics. She walked into a pharmacy, looking at the shelves full of medicine behind the counter, so many thousands of pills locked inside hundreds of bottles.

“Do you have insurance?” the pharmacist asked her then.

“Please,” Maria said, looking at the shelves full of medicine behind the counter. There was so much back there, she would later tell Jason, so many thousands of pills locked inside hundreds of bottles. “I just need a little bit.”

But she had no insurance and no money. The pharmacist turned her away.

“What can we do for you?” Jason asked now in Spanish, settling into a patched leather couch. “Are you depressed?”

Maria said nothing and stared at the floor. Her granddaughter placed a tiny hand on her shoulder, and Maria’s darkening eyes filled with tears. “I’m worried about the children,” she said.

Everything in her cramped home faced one corner, where Maria had filled the walls with